Agriculture Canada’s top official says the department may modify its cost recovery plans if the farm sector can prove the added costs put businesses in jeopardy.
“What we have been saying to ourselves is that this is an important initiative from the budget that we have to work hard at,” deputy agriculture minister Frank Claydon said in an interview. “I think it can work but we also have to realize there can be difficulties and parts that the sector can find troublesome.”
Claydon said he has yet to see numbers and arguments which convince him user fees threaten to put people out of business.
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And he said political uproar over cost recovery proposed for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency is partly the result of growing pains for the new agency, rather than government bungling.
He does not believe the government has mishandled the issue.
“It was to a large extent growing pains at work as we learned to talk to one another and figure out what the relationship is going to be,” said Claydon. “I don’t think it is proper to say it was something that was mishandled.”
Tempest grows
Nonetheless, the deputy minister conceded the political campaign that has grown around cost recovery, complete with lobby efforts and Parliament Hill hearings, caught the department off guard.
“Everyone thought the difficult issue of the 1995 budget was going to be elimination of the Crow but compared to cost recovery, it was a piece of cake,” he said. “It’s been tough because it is a departure from the way we have been doing things before.”
Claydon said the department is willing to consider proposals for cost avoidance or reduction, including transferring more responsibility to the industry.
He said the department is making sure the soon-to-be-created food inspection agency is properly funded so it does not have to begin charging the industry more for its services.
